All I know about Brandon Nimmo is what I‘ve read. He comes from Wyoming which is a state that doesn’t have High School baseball ( The population of the state of Wyoming is the same as Staten Island’s minus the Mob Wives) so he had to play American Legion ball which, in the case of young men of Wyoming, is their high school team. It seem that besides a headline writers dream last name, he’s athletic and has a quick bat, a strong arm and at 6’2 “185lbs so at 17 years old he should fill out another couple of inches and maybe 25-30 lbs. He has speed even though he has had knee surgery and the Mets will have to go over slot to sign him.

I also know the Mets VP of Player Development, Paul DePodesta and Scouting Director, Chad MacDonald and his staff have followed Nimmo very, very closely and extensively and are confident that this young man will project into a solid major league corner outfielder with power, speed and a great throwing arm. All of this is pure speculation and DePo and MacDonald would be the first ones to tell you that. But they felt with the hours and hours of work and study and checking and cross-checking they have done on this prospect, will pay off in the years to come.

What we as Mets fans have is someone to watch grow over the next three-four years and to root for to make it to the big league’s as a Met and be that impact player, the front office feels he can be.

We don’t really need to analyze the picks the Mets make or speculate on whether they drafted a guy to early or too late because quite frankly, what the hell do we know about these players? The MLB Entry Draft is unlike the NFL or NBA Draft, we’ve seen (for the most part) the players who make the jump from college to pros and in those two sports, your first round pick better make a contribution to your team or you as GM or Player Personnel Director won’t be in the War Room much longer.

So let’s start off small here and hope that Nimmo and the Mets compensation pick RHP Michael Fulmer sign with the team (both players have commitments to University of Arkansas ) and head to the Gulf Coast League. On second thought, that’s not a small item, let’s hope Sandy Alderson can get the Skill Sets and Minority Einhorn to pony up the dough to sign these two kids, otherwise all DePo will have to show for his first draft for the Mets is a lot of frequent flyer miles.

MLB either has to jazz up the telecast of this draft or scrap it altogether. What a bore. My wife sat on the couch next to me reading while I watched it drone on and on and said “I know you love baseball but my god how can you watch this”? There was absolutely no juice, no bling, no posse and the only bad suit in the place belonged to Bud Selig. Just dreadful.

Maybe it’s me. I’ve been told that I can be a bit dense at times but for the life of me I can’t understand how some Mets fans feel that the recently completed road trip from hell was because of Carlos Beltran’ return to the lineup ? Now let me set the record straight here, I am not the President nor a member of the Carlos Beltran Fan Club, in fact I have called on the Mets to deal Beltran since 2008 and I would hope he has a great second half as getting out from his contract would a huge plus for the organization, but to say that Beltran has hurt the team chemistry by coming back, is beyond stupid.

This team is only acts as a cohesive bunch when they win, once adversity hits and that by the way is how you measure this worn out word chemistry, the NY Mets turn into the French Army. After wining games, especially at home, shirts are flying out of pants, hats are tilted to the side, players are jumping up and “high fiving” it’s quite the spectacle. But when they lose, and they do this with regularity on the road, their heads are down, shirts stay neatly in their pants, blank stares into space replace high jumping hand slaps. No team in sports acts in such a bi-polar way than the NY Mets.

Now the fans are starting to get like that. Beltran is a “clubhouse cancer” they say, huh, if anything Beltran is a low flame kind of guy, but he produces both with the bat and the glove. He has looked very rusty with both so far since his return from knee surgery but it’s such a small sampling but who knows, maybe he will never regain his old form. The same fans that hate Beltran, have fallen in love with Jeff Francoeur and seem to think he was a big reason the Mets went on a nice run in June, I guess an OPS of .845 is impressive to some. If Beltran had a month like that he’d be an underachiever.

I really don’t get it. The Mets right now are playing their three best outfielders in Bay, Beltran and Pagan. Unfortunately, Bay and Beltran are struggling but what both have over Francoeur is they have a body of work that is All Star caliber, whereas Frenchy has a strong right arm and a great smile. I’d rather take the proven All Stars myself.

Again it comes down to what has been a problem in Flushing for the past couple or three years, this team is made up of some very fragile folks who turn to over cooked spaghetti when times get tough. See, a guy like Jason Bay has surprised me as he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t make a lot of noise with his mouth and has proven to be capable of stepping up and performing when the spotlight is blinding as we saw when he went to Boston to replace Manny Ramirez. But then again when you have guys like Big Papi, Mike Lowell, Youk and Dustin Pedrioa it helps. The Mets don’t have anyone close to those guys on their team. Sure you have a fake tough guy like Leader of Men, Alex Cora but there is no one (sadly David Wright isn’t one either) who says” jump on my back boys and I’ll carry you” the closet guy like that amongst the everyday players right now is Angel Pagan. It’s not the loudest guy or the rah-rah guy who fits the leader mold, it’s the guy who knows when to take pitches to get on base, who gets the big base hit with two out man in scoring position but Mets fans seem to think the louder you shout the more productive you are, that’s a fallacy. The People’s Cherce, Jeff Francoeur with all his personality had never carried a team but the guy Mets fans love to hate, Carlos Beltran has.

The Mets get hammered in this town for a multitude of offenses and in most instances, the bludgeoning is warranted but when it comes to the decision by J-Man to work Jose Reyes into the 3 spot of the lineup, the criticism is not only unwarranted but it’s also senseless.

In today’s NY Post, avid Mets hater Joel Sherman (there are lot’s of Mets haters in MSM, Jon Heyman, Bill Madden, Tom Verducci and of course their Emperor Mike Francesa) has a full page column today take the Met to task for batting Reyes third, even though he admits it’s out of necessity and just something Manuel pulled out of his ass:

The shift is a reaction to Carlos Beltran’s knee surgery, which will cost him at least a month of the season. Without Beltran to hit third, Manuel fears the lineup lacks length if he simply has David Wright bat third and Jason Bay fourth. The order would dip precipitously at No. 5, likely with Daniel Murphy. In addition, Manuel wants to preserve Reyes’ legs and feels batting him third will translate to fewer steal attempts to limit the risk of having runners thrown out in front of your best RBI men, Wright and Bay.

Sherman goes on in the article to give his hypothesis on why this is bad idea, but gives no solution, which of course there isn’t any. If Carlos Beltran were of sound mind and knee, this would not even be an issue but as we know the best laid plans of mice and Mets never go as planed and so they have this situation to make the best of the lineup until Beltran gets back.

Sherman lays out the answer to the why part of Reyes hitting third when he mentions Daniel Murphy hitting fifth. Murphy is not a #5 hitter. He’s a perfect #2 but the problem is Luis Castillo is also a perfect #2. And there is the problem; the Mets have two #2 and two #1 in Reyes and Angel Pagan.

From the rumbling’s from St. Lonesome, Beltran is progressing nicely and should just miss just the first month of the season (I know, I know you’ll believe it when you see it) so when he comes back Reyes moves back to the #1 spot and Beltran back to #3 and the team will live happily ever after. I hope.

The biggest story is not just the surgery but it seems Beltran did this on his own going to his own doctor, Dr Richard Stedman in Colorado. It’s unacceptable for a player to not let the team know he’s going for surgery and to make it worse, he doesn’t use the team’s physician. This just cements the feeling that the Mets players have no faith in the Mets medical staff.

Now this is not end of the world news as Beltran will be out about 3 months so for the first month of the season Angel Pagan can handle centerfield, so there is no need for the organization to make a panic move for a centerfielder.

What this does though is make you question how the organization looks at Beltran in regard to not coming to the team about his knee and using an outside doctor to perform the surgery and how does this effect Beltran to getting an extension of his contract, something he has been hinting at.

I can understand not wanting to spend over 45 mil for Manny Ramirez but you mean to tell me that with the first class facilities the Mets crow about down in St Lonesome, they couldnâ€™t purchase or lease a state of the art MRI an fly down Dr. Altcheck for month in sunny FLA.Â I still say the only reason that Johan Santana was not flown to NY is due to the 10 inches of snow thatâ€™s on the ground and still falling from the sky here in NYC

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If you read the Daily News this morning you get the impression that Santana agrees with Old School Dan Warthen that he tried to accelerated his training so he could pitch in the WBC. If you read the NY Post they make it sound like Old School Dan Warthen made Santana throw to much and too soon. I think Iâ€˜ll stick with Adam Rubinâ€™s reporting although I do think that it is not a coincidence that both Santana and Tim Redding, both coming off surgery, are both having arm trouble due to compensating from knee surgery in Johanâ€™ case and foot surgery for Redding. Santana I mentioned wanted to make the WBC and Redding wants that number 5 spot in the rotation and sees the completion and looked to rush back a bit too soon. The organization has to tighten up itâ€™s rehab policies here. They may have dodged a bullet here with Santana but hopefully they learned a lesson and look over their training regiment.

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